And that's a wrap.

Well, close enough, anyway.

December 31, 2017 // The last 50 weeks or so....

One more outrage won't hurt anything, right?

Balanced?

Note: For this first year, the voice of TWAN has maintained the editorial “we.” For today, we’re choosing to mix that with a more personal approach, to give some brief background on the site and how it came to be, which is why you’ll read “I” from time to time in this particular piece.

On January 21, 2017, after years of threatening to do so, I registered a domain name called TwoWeeksAgoNews. For many, many years, I had regaled (some might say annoyed) friends, family and strangers with the theory that we all had the attention spans of gerbils (which is being unfair to gerbils), and that it was about time someone pointed that out and called us on it. The inauguration of one Donald Trump as president of the United States seemed as good a time as any to start talking about this for real, on a website.

So it began. Before we go much further, let’s stipulate to the following. This Presidency has been unlike any other in my memory, at least in terms of the President’s public statements and behavior. What astonishes me is that we seem to be consistently astonished by this. We did NOT elect another career politician. We elected a private citizen who spent his life in business. Regardless of the regard you hold for the President, it’s fair to say that he is not following the rules that have been in place in Washington for decades and decades about making deals, finding yourself among strange bedfellows and “getting along” and compromising to get something of value. Is that a good thing? No idea.

And yes, much of the content on the site revolved around the endless, energetic, enervating outrage expressed daily on social media about the President, his family, his Cabinet, his staff, his associates and his communication “style.” Was it warranted? Maybe. Maybe not. That’s the question, isn’t it? I wish I could tell you a definitive answer. In almost every case, our attention turned elsewhere long before two weeks had passed.

The question that gets posed regularly in email to me is this: “Are you a fan of the President?” The most honest answer I can give is this: I don’t think of the content on TWAN as being “for or against” the President. I think of it as being a “fan” of encouraging people to think for themselves and educate themselves. Believing, parroting and sharing information that is slanted (right or left) at best and blatantly false at worst is unforgivable as far as the site is concerned. It serves no one and nothing.

Today’s New York Times contained a short piece I hoped would shed some light on our current national point of view. In "A Few Things Before We Go," the author wonders "Did the Russians influence the election?" Aha. Finally - some clarity. Wrong. I have no idea if they did or didn't as a result of reading this article but I did learn the following: Dr. Emily Thorsen researched the effect that fact-checking has on the thought process. Her conclusion was that fact-checking did the job and people trust the information they reveal but they can't remove the false information from their consciousness. They just can't. She calls these "belief echoes," the scraps of information that are left behind by misinformation. So when someone of influence lies, correcting that lie through fact-checking mitigate the damage only slightly. Most people will retain the lie and possibly act as if it were true.

On that note, we can't let the year end without offering one more outrage du jour. It just feels right.

As recently as two days ago, I read the following words on facebook about the President and his activities: Horrified. Angry. Disgusting. Inhuman. Sickening, Heartless, Despicable, Fraud. Hatred. Why the contempt? You won’t be surprised to learn that TWAN looked into it.

Here are the facts behind the outrage:

On September 29, 2017, by Executive Order, among the Federal Advisory Committees with terms extended to September 30, 2019, was the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA).

On December 1, 2017, a call for nominations to serve on PACHA was posted on the National Register, by B. Kaye Hayes, Executive Director, Presidential Advisory Council on HIV / AIDS. TWAN has particular interest in highlighting the following passage from the nomination document:

For the PACHA, it is important that the perspectives of people living with HIV, those from groups that are disproportionately affected by HIV infection and AIDS, health care providers, and organizations providing prevention, care and treatment services to these populations be included. Every effort is made to ensure that the views of women, all ethnic and racial groups. And people with disabilities are represented on HHS federal advisory committees and, therefore, the Department encourages nominations of qualifies candidates from these groups. The Department also encourages geographic diversity in the composition of the Council. Appointment to the Council shall be made without discrimination on the basis of age, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and cultural, religious, or socioeconomic status.**

** This passage is identical to the language the Obama administration used when it posted a notice for new members in March, 2013.

On December 29, 2017 every remaining member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/Aids was terminated. From the Washington Post article, there was this statement: “Changing the makeup of federal advisory committee members is a common occurrence during administration changes,” Hayes* said in the statement. “The Obama administration dismissed the George W. Bush administration appointees to PACHA in order to bring in new voices. All PACHA members are eligible to apply to serve on the new council that will be convened in 2018.”

* Hayes served in this role during the Obama administration as well.

The article reported that termination letters were delivered without warning by way of FedEx. Gabriel Maldonado, chief executive of the LGBT and HIV/AIDS group TruEvolution and a council member until this week, said he could only speculate why the final members were fired. "Like any administration, they want their own people there,” Maldonado, an Obama appointee, told the Blade.

But [Patrick] Sullivan (member of the Council) and [Scott] Schoettes (lawyer with Lambda Legal) said that previous administrations had allowed members to serve full terms before appointing replacements. “It is important to have a rolling, transitioning body that crosses administrations that really has a set of diverse outlooks on the epidemic,” Sullivan said.

We found this interesting, from The Washington Blade: “Trump’s termination of council members isn’t a first time an administration cleaned house on PACHA. The Obama administration eliminated all of George W. Bush’s appointees before making new appointments."

We also thought it was interesting that no one on social media seemed to post about this.

Or this, when the Obama administration appointed 24 people to serve on PACHA in 2010. At this time, they also announced the first meeting of PACHA during the Obama administration. (For anyone counting, that’s about 15 months after President Obama was elected.)

For the record, and just to be completely transparent, we support PACHA and hope that the committed, educated, passionate people who serve on the committee help inform and offer some practical next steps to the government and that the actions they inaugurate bring an end to HIV/AIDS here and around the world. And until we learn otherwise, we have no reason to believe that the people who will eventually make up the members of PACHA would have any other agenda.

One more note: We had no illusions that one little website that was a passion project, not a way to earn a living or launch a media conglomerate, would make a difference. But we are somewhat discouraged nonetheless. Despite the deluge of story after story after story, delivered with venom and rancor, as citizens and voters, we don’t read any more carefully than we ever did. Dr. Thorsen's research notwithstanding, it seems we believe what we believe and nothing can change our minds.

Unfortunately, we can quarrel about everything from the way the president wears his ties to the ties he has with Vladimir Putin but the fact remains: we’re in this together, people. All one need do is scroll through the outrages that were captured here over the past year to see how almost none of them – maybe NONE – were of any real consequence. Yet we all seemed quite agitated and certain that each one would bring dire circumstances to the populace. Feeding the hate and whipping up the outrage seemed to be its own reward.

We’ll either figure out how to communicate and listen to each other – the man in the Oval notwithstanding – or we won’t. And if we choose not to, believing instead that sharing the “Horrified. Angry. Disgusting. Inhuman. Sickening. Heartless. Despicable. Fraud. Hatred” reactions to wholly-believed stories posted on social media serves to elevate our national conversation, we’re doomed.

But we're going to stay the course. As much as we can, as faithfully as we can. We’ll try to point out the story behind the headlines, and if that feels partisan to some, so be it. Our goal here is honesty and the truth. Feel free to call us out on anything that is factually inaccurate. We’ll post corrections as needed. We welcome diverse voices, and opinions that are the complete opposite of those posted here, but request that the conversation remain intelligent and full of critical thought. Anything less is just more of the outrage we find so useless.

Thank you for reading us this first year, and for sharing your thoughts. We're humbled and honored that you spend a little of your time here. Onto year two.